Brand New Cataclysm Info! (Some Major Stuff)

Ladies and Gentlemen! This past week I was afforded the opportunity to attend a Press Event at the Blizzard offices in Irvine. At that event we got access to a lot of new information about Cataclysm...information which we are now delighted to share with you!

Hang on to your hats, because there are some big changes waiting after the break—including a new raid "downshifting system, changes to the Guild Advancement system, and (bombshell) the complete removal of the Path of the Titans system!

All the info is after the break!

Path of the Titans and the Glyph System

Path of the Titans: Removed!

Blizzard has scrapped the entire Path of the Titans progression system. As it is, it may be coming back—but not likely.

Tom Chilton explained that Blizzard had spent a long time working on the Path of the Titans system, trying to balance making it complicated enough to be interesting, but simple enough to be understandable. At the end of the day, they realized that they had ripped it all down until it resembled an upgrade to the glyph system. Simultaneously, they felt that the Glyph system wasn't as much of a game-changer in WotLK as they had originally wanted it to be, so they've decided instead to scrap the Path of the Titans concept, and instead focus on making the glyph system into the feature they had originally wanted.

Glyph System Changes

To accomplish this, they've added a new tier of glyphs: Medium Glyphs. Tom explained that in Wrath, people were really powergaming their glyph choices—that glyphs, like talents, had gotten to a point where everyone agreed on what the "best" glyphs were for each class and spec, and anyone who chose otherwise was dumb. With medium glyphs, they're trying to break that system up a bit—major glyphs are still critical, but minor and medium glyphs have more flexibility.

On the UI side, there have also been a few changes—I was asked not to take photos, but the glyph UI now lists all the possible glyphs for your class. Tom Chilton pointed out that up until now there had been no way to get a complete list of all your possible glyphs in-game—the only option was to go to the Auction House and look through what was available (or to patronize our own fine establishment).

There was also talk about making glyphs permanent rather than consumable—so that as soon as you used a glyph for the first time, it was added to your "list", and thereafter you could rearrange your glyphs later on as you chose.

Guild Advancement

Guild Reputation

Firstly, the whole guild currency idea has been scrapped. The rewards that they had originally had in mind for that system, like special guild tabards and mounts (with your guild insignia on them and everything!) are now unlocked by guild achievements. Rather than buying them with guild currency, you buy them with simple gold—but which rewards you can buy is restricted by your guild reputation.

You farm guild rep by doing four things:

Completing quests

Doing rated Battlegrounds

Killing raid bosses (to get credit, the raid that downs the boss must be mostly comprised of guild members—7/10 for 10-mans, and 20/25 for 25-mans)

Earning guild achievements

Basically, you'll be farming rep with your guild in exactly the same way you would farm any endgame rep—and the rewards will (presumably) be similar. A final decision hasn't been made yet about how guild reputation will transfer (if at all) between alts, but they did say that leaving a guild won't immediately wipe your guild reputation—though joining a new guild probably will.

Guild Achievements

Some examples of possible guild achievements were offered:

10,000 total quests completed

Having a max-rank of every profession

Having an 85 of every class

etc.

In addition, some of the existing achievements (like the classic raiding meta) are being converted into guild achievements, to give players a reason to go back and do them. This allows players to farm achievements to help their guild's rank and their guild reputation, even if they already have them all.

As it stands now, guild achievements will be retained by the guild, even if all the members of the guild who were present when the achievement was earned have left the guild. The guild achievement pane actually lists the guild members who were present at the time the achievement was originally earned.

Guild Leveling

The whole guild talents idea has been scrapped as well. Tom Chilton talked for a while about the issues they faced—Can only the guild leader pick the talents? Do you have respecs? Who pays for them? How do you make all the players feel involved? Do you min-max builds, so that all guilds feel the same? Instead, they've altered it to a simpler system: each guild progresses normally from level 1 to level 25, and gains a new perk at each level—just like a character learning new spells. The guild menu will now show you what your existing perks are, and what the perks will be come the next guild level. No information was given about how exactly guilds would progress, but it's easy to guess at possible methods—raiding, group pvp, guild achievements, etc.

New Guild Interface

Another thing I was frustrated not to be able to photograph, guilds now have a fully revamped interface with a lot of long-awaited features.

First of all, there's a new guild landing page, with a news feed—something broadly similar to the character feed for individual characters on the Armory, but for the entire guild—listing recent successes in raiding, new characters hitting max level, etc. You can also flag items as "sticky", in case you want to make sure the Message of the Day stays up there, or you're exceptionally proud of a recent kill.

In addition, the guild roster is now filterable. You can now see the professions of your guild members from the guild menu—and sort players by profession. This enables you to do things like searching for a crafter in your guild who can make the item you need, so you can easily contact them—a HUGE time-saver.

Raids

10-Mans and 25-Mans

You guys already know that Blizzard is planning to consolidate 10-man and 25-man raiding into less of a difficulty setting and more of a playstyle choice. This means that 10-man and 25-man encounters will be designed to have roughly the same difficulty level, and will drop items from the same loot table. To compensate for the additional logistical hassle of getting 25 players online rather than 10, Blizzard will be giving out more loot per player in 25-mans—specifically, about 50% more. It was strongly hinted that this extra loot would come in the form of Emblems.

What they hadn't announced previously is the ability to "downshift" your raid. Imagine if you do a 25-man run of a new instance, get about halfway through, and call it a night. The next day you get back together to do another run, but—big surprise—only 20 people show up. Well, now you can "downshift" your raid into two separate 10-man groups, and just keep right on going. The maximum number of 10-mans you can make out of one 25-man is three—meaning, if the remaining five guys show up the next day, they can swap down to a 10-man as well and keep right on going.

Blizzard is not allowing players to "upshift". They explained that they felt this would cause a lot of pressure on guild to pull some really unpleasant maneuvers—for instance, stripping out the bottom 15 players to do some particularly difficult encounter, and then inviting them all back in for trash. They figured the legitimate use-cases for upshifting a raid were much more rare.

Raid Lockouts

Here's another big change—they've added a great deal of flexibility to raid lockouts. Rather than being locked into a particular raid ID, you can now join any raid, as long as it doesn't have any bosses up that you have already killed. Basically, as long as you're not killing the same boss twice in one lockout period—you have total freedom.

New Zones

Stormwind

Has been completely redesigned to accomodate fly-overs. A lot of attention specifically has been paid to Stormwind Keep.

A second trade district—mailbox, auction house, bank, etc.—has been added to the Dwarven District.

On the way out of Blackrock mountain, Deathwing has destroyed the Park completely. Have no fear—the druid trainers have relocated.

They've added some new areas in the back—some lake area, as well as a city cemetery. Some quests have been added here to help flesh them out.

Orgrimmar

Garrosh is hanging out in the center of Orgimmar, not the Valley of Wisdom. A metaphor?

The goblins have their own area, the Goblin Slums, in the west end of the Valley of Spirits. Garrosh doesn't think much of them.

There is a second trade district in Orgrimmar too—in the Valley of Honor. They're also adding more forges.

The Valley of Wisdom is now a Tauren district.

There's now a back gate, leading into Azshara—providing a convenient entrance for goblins leveling through that zone.

The Drag is the only throwback to old Orgrimmar.

The Bastion of Twilight

This will be a raid offshoot of Grim Batol, run by the Twilight's Hammer.

Skywall

Vortex Pinnacle: 5-man, will battle against the minions of Al'Akir the Windlord. Bosses include a djinn, a storm dragon, and a lesser elemental lord

You will be able to use your flying mount to fly from platform to platform (real mount, unlike The Oculus)

Raid is similar to this, but larger in scope—you WILL fight Al'Akir himself

Holy cow I wish I could take pictures, this place looks gorgeous. It's like a cross between Ulduar, Dalaran, and clouds.

Deepholm

The Orgrim's Hammer has crash-landed in this zone! The Skybreaker is still in the air, and you will be tasked with finding out what happened!

Deepholm USED to be settled, but when Deathwing broke out of the Earth temple, the whole zone became disrupted.

Therazane the Stonemother will be hanging out here. She'll run a quest hub with dailies and a rep similar to the Sons of Hodir, but, you know, better.

Uldum

This is like WoW does Egypt. Like titan architecture, but with squares and pyramids instead of circles and globes.

Denizens of Uldum are called the "Tol'Vir", and are connected somehow with Al'Akir's wind elementals.

Other Juicy Tidbits

The Shimmering Flats is mostly submerged, but the majority of the gameplay still takes place above water.

You will be hearing brand new music in familiar zones.

The Forsaken are coming into their own—you'll be seeing their own unique architecture as they spread across Silverpine Forest and other zones.

When you gain a level, an announcement appears in the center of the screen letting you know what new abilities you have access to, and advising you to see your trainer. Skills you're leveled for but haven't trained yet will be marked as such in your spellbook.

Archaeology will let you find two types of items—Common Artifacts, which are kind of a collection game where you're trying to find all of the artifacts for a particular race, and Rare Items which will produce actual usable items. Most Rare Items will be cosmetic only, but a few will have actual effects.

Cross-server raiding still hasn't been solved. They're working on it, but it's not there yet.

There will be more Algalon-style encounters—ultra-hard optional bosses for hardcore players only.

The current heirlooms will stop growing after level 80. There will be a whole new crop of heirlooms for Cataclysm. Goblins and Worgen will be able to start using heirlooms immediately at launch.

Wrath of the Lich King had about 1000 new quests. Cataclysm has over 3000.

So that's the rundown, ladies and gentlemen! What do you think? Are you confused, disappointed, or excited? What are you looking forward to the most?

Comments

Comment by MrX101

on 2010/06/13 03:26:37

I'm Extremely! Dissapointed in the Guild Talents and Path of the Titans going away. Man there srly making things much too easy now..., Too complicated common blizz, stuff being complicated is what makes them fun in the first place, simply crap gets old fast...

Also WTF Permanent Gylphs that you just choose out of combat wtf?I thought the idea of Gylphs where that you keep the best ones in you bag to constantly switch between bosses, as each one was suppose to have advantages and disavantages but it ended up all &*!@ed.. I wanna know how Insribors are gonna get money if they make em permanent..

Meh... Least Raids system seems to be improving,

Comment by Sinespe

on 2010/06/13 03:29:32

Path of the Titans did seem to be a bit too much bloat when Blizzard was already developing so much for Cataclysm. It was a nice idea, but it needed to be so elaborate that I think they've made a wise choice to put it on a back-burner. That will allow them to invest more of their resources on developing an expansion that already looks like it's shaping up to have brilliant depth.

I do, however, think that the loss of Guild Talents is huge -- but I can see why they did it. Sometimes having too much choice is a bad thing, and the animosity from certain guildies wanting certain talents which work out as "Sub-optimal" to the guild's overall aims could lead to unnecessary rifts in otherwise stable guilds. I think the compromise of per-level perks, and increasing the guild level cap by 5 to 25, will be more than enough to give that extra sense of importance for guilds to stick together.

Comment by Nukedoom

on 2010/06/13 03:37:40

You will be hearing brand new music in familiar zones.

My prayers—they have been heard.

I expect nothing less than heavy death metal music while training in Westfall.

Comment by Othragon

on 2010/06/13 03:40:07

That's some serious amount of information to digest. I'm gonna have to go back and read it all again.

...

Just wow. I'm getting the feeling that Cataclysm is either gonna be really well accepted or turn alotta people away from the game. I feel that in wrath they added many new features but the keyword here is indeed change. Not everyone is susceptible to this grose amount of change all of a sudden. Many people will feel disoriented wich is not a feeling you want to get in a game this size.

Comment by blajy

on 2010/06/13 03:56:04

i am excited about the news i have only 1 question....when cataclysm will be released? (stupid q i know but i really want the answer)

Comment by Beir

on 2010/06/13 03:57:02

I wanna know how Insribors are gonna get money if they make em permanent..

Scribes will make money the same way Tailors, Blacksmiths, and Leatherworkers make money. They will sell a few permanent items and will likely have one or two consumable items that everyone wants/needs.

Comment by Meebo

Here's hoping all this Guild Achievements, Guild Rep/Exp will mean that people will start to look for guilds again instead of continually pugging and having to state stupid GS numbers just to get in.

Comment by finfangfool

on 2010/06/13 04:16:30

My first reaction to the scrapping of path of the titans was disappointment. It was something new I wanted to explore, so I was sad to see it go. But truthfully I think Inscription is a fairly weak trade-skill, so using it to take PoT's place and adding the medium glyphs means we'll still have the same amount of customization, it just won't have a cool name like "Path of the Titans".

I don't see a problem with the changes to guild achievements. Seems like they're keeping all the goodies, just making it easier for casual guilds (like mine) and making it easier for guilds to cooperate with each other rather than competing. I like the changes to raiding, and most of the other stuff was already hinted at so no big deal there. Rather experience it first-hand at this point then read about it.

One other thing, this does seem like a move to streamline it so as to push it out faster. I'm ok with this. I'm already getting bored with the current game (levelling another alt for fun), but I'm waiting on the Echo Isles event to tide me over and hoping for an October release. So long as they don't remove archaeology from the game I'm happy.

Comment by Saankaa

on 2010/06/13 04:17:39

I can't wait! Gimme release, or at least beta!

Comment by menemew

on 2010/06/13 04:19:35

OMG! Saurfangs gunship has crashed, impossible! :´(

Comment by Psyxer

on 2010/06/13 04:20:49

lol Screenshot №6 - tree from Avatar

Comment by Yzaxtol

on 2010/06/13 04:21:18

When i first read this article I was double checking the date to make sure it wasn't April 1st ... but I can see where they're going and hope they make a different character progression which isn't directly linked to leveling up.

Probably just going to be reputation rewards. :S

Comment by aaroc

on 2010/06/13 04:21:19

I wanna know how Insribors are gonna get money if they make em permanent..

Scribes will make money the same way Tailors, Blacksmiths, and Leatherworkers make money. They will sell a few permanent items and will likely have one or two consumable items that everyone wants/needs.

What I think would be the best direction to go with inscription would be to take the consumable scrolls that scribes can make, and actually make them useful. Remove their current mutual exclusive behavior and let them act like additional flasks/elixers/whatever.

Comment by menemew

on 2010/06/13 04:28:51

You will be hearing brand new music in familiar zones.

My prayers—they have been heard.

I expect nothing less than heavy death metal music while training in Westfall.

Why would you have heavy death metal in WESTFALL? worst place to exist.

Comment by ArkkiMeisseli

on 2010/06/13 04:44:42

After reading all this and adding it up to everything else I've seen, I can now honestly say that I'm looking forward to the 4th of July.No, I'm not a Real American Patriot - that just happens to be the day my WoW subscription expires.

Comment by LotosTheWarlock

on 2010/06/13 04:45:43

aww i was really looking forward to The Path Of The Titans i thought it would of been pretty fun but, BLIZZARD is the experts. i'm just really happy to get to play cataclysm

Comment by Darkmanian

on 2010/06/13 04:46:29

Pretty sensible measures went into taking out the content they have. Its just odd that the developers didn't have the work flow set out in a way that they could predict these road blocks that lead to them taking out PoTT and guild talents. I'd like to think that before they conceive an idea and birth it in an engine, that they also consider the long term effects it might have so that they save time and resources.

Comment by Sinespe

on 2010/06/13 05:07:03

OMG! Saurfangs gunship has crashed, impossible! :´(

Someone told him "Dranosh" means "Heart of Monologue" and, while cleaving that person, he also accidentally cleaved the ship.